Social awareness is no match for a foot massage

by maddrunkgenius

The men’s bathroom was occupied so I went and used the women’s, but when I put the seat up, there was blood underneath.

Men need to be protected from women’s restrooms.

So far at this bar I’ve spent a lot of time working, and I’m not sure what all work I accomplished. I got to listen to two drunk folk try to talk at me, and despite all my noncommittal, neutral responses, still I couldn’t fully shake them on their own till they found one another & out-louded each other in a ‘conversation’ that never quite synced in understanding.

Then again, drunks are better at talking than hearing, and never good at understanding on either side.

I was working because I’ve got a new job, and it’s a good job, the sort to lift a body out of poverty & have real economic security. It’s a trajectory-changing sort of job, yet all I can think is, ‘I am a goddamned fraud. I dont deserve this. I’m going to fail, and it’ll be no one else’s fault but mine.’

That’s the worst thing about an opportunity. When you dont have any, you can justifiably blame society & its structural inequalities for your suffering. But when you do get that break, when you get your chance to show what you’re made of, you might have to face the idea that you’re made of shit, and even with all of the advantages available to you in life, you’d still have turned out a loser.

Everyone is an impostor, of course. No one is the thing that is projected upon them, because a summary description of another person has to be too simple, has to leave out all of the insecurities & doubts of internal consideration before any action is taken. So you have to just be a person, and hope that what’s projected onto you is a tailwind in the direction you want to go.

I know that, but acknowledgement is meaningless. If I fail at this thing, part of me thinks that I might as well just blow the rest of my money on drugs (that’s being generous; really I mean liquor) & a handgun to exit stage so to provide enough space for some other possibly above-replacement human being to come in. This is cowardly & lazy, mainly. But then I think, ‘You’re a default & a meat eater. Your impact on the earth has surely been a net negative so far.’

And yet making more money wouldn’t do anything to alter that truth. It would just provide enough resources to reward the selfish parts of me & buy off the guilt. Social awareness is no match for a foot massage.

Regardless of when I take my life or it is taken from me, all my words will be faithfully summarized as ‘Why aren’t I writing more?’ That’ll be true at 60 as well as 30.

But that other little voice, the manic one, whispers incessantly if not always audibly, ‘Oh, you’re about to manage something marvelously clever yet.’

When it comes amid a good, steady drunk, that is a grand feeling indeed.